Aqui Griffin delivered a visually stunning entry to our recent game design competition that is as easy to pick-up and play as it is to look at. enQbate is a simple puzzle game in which the objective is to highlight all cells in play by mousing over them with the cursor and then clicking.

You sit yourself down in front of an odd looking, dusty old monitor that displays what appears to be a radar screen with a few colored markers and controls along the outer edge. There are no instructions to be found anywhere, just the thrill of discovery by pointing and clicking with the mouse. You can do no harm to it; nothing is going to break or send you whirling into space without a helmet. So leave caution to the wind and boldly go into Orbit.

Tower of Babblers, an entry by Lars A. Doucet in our second Flash game design competition, is one part puzzle, one part frantic action game. It takes the contest theme of "grow" and morphs it a bit into "build", incorporating cute fuzzy creatures into one of the most unique titles entered into the competition.

It really is amazing to see such creativity sprout from a simple word, as with the recent competition and its "grow" theme. Beginning with a very simple premise of expanding rectangles on a grid to connect them, Wouter Visser creates a unique and enjoyable puzzle game entry with PLANned. In this 18-level game, there are only but a few rules that you need to know to get started.

Earning an honorable mention in our 2nd Flash game competition is Rings and Sticks, a captivating and original puzzle game from designer Komix and created expressly for the competition. More so than any other entry in the contest, Rings and Sticks took the Grow theme and made it a fundamental element of the gameplay.

In Gateway 2 you again guide a robot, through a dream-like setting, in order to solve numerous and varied mini-puzzles for a seemingly unknown purpose (though a purpose there is, as you soon discover). Using well-placed musical cues and subtle environmental sound the author has created a virtual world that draws you in from the moment you launch the game. The setting and aesthetics are so enticing and mysterious, it doesn't matter at first that you don't know what your ultimate goal is (or indeed if you have one).

Sprout is a creative and original adventure puzzle game created for our second CasualGameplay Design Competition. From the moment you lay eyes on it you know it's something special. The unique artwork for a Flash game has a paper-cut appearance that lends a storybook atmosphere to the game. This environment perfectly suits the role you play as a young seedling trying to find its way home. Sprout has everything we love to see in a Flash game: originality, a simple design, and a beautiful presentation.

With voting now over, it is my pleasure to announce the recipient of the Audience Prize for the CasualGameplay Design Competition #2: Sprout!! With 41.6% of the popular vote, Jeff Nusz' Sprout proves beyond a doubt to be the favorite among the JIG community as well.

When we first announced the competition and its "GROW" theme in January, the response was warm and welcoming. There seemed to be a popular expectation that the competition would yield games similar to the Grow series from On of Eyezmaze. Instead, we received more than a dozen different "GROW" interpretations, each one creative and original in its own way, and not a single Grow clone. And still the games exceeded our expectations.

You might have guessed that with a name like Growbal Warming, it is likely the next entry from our "grow" themed competition; and you'd be right! The game was designed and created by Richard Ohanian, a fellow alum of RIT, and it features gameplay that mimics the futility we potentially face with the problem of global warming.

Bart Bonte sends in this next competition entry all the way from Belgium. Chicken Grow is a point-and-click puzzler that will have you hunting, pecking and scratching (and perhaps even bobbing your head forward and back like a chicken.) As with the other entries, discovery is part of this game, too.

When we made the announcement for our 2nd Flash Game Design Competition we said that additional prizes would be announced, and we weren't kidding. I have just confirmed with Adobe that not only are they going to sponsor this competition as they did our first one by offering two (2) Flash 8 Professional licenses to award to the top two games submitted, they will also upgrade those prizes to the Adobe Video Bundle if either winner has made good or innovative use of either Premiere Pro for video or After Effects for animation/video within their Flash game!

Wooty tooty flip-bam-booty! We hosted our 2nd Flash Game Design Competition! Yes, the type of entry we were looking for was the same as what we called for during our first competition. The simple puzzle idea proved to be an excellent choice, and we have over a dozen excellent games now to choose from. Congratulations to Sprout and Gateway II for taking home the prizes valued at over $2000!!

by Elizabeth Reynolds is one of the puzzle games submitted to our first Game Design Competition. Four instruments sit silently on the right side of the screen, each in a different colored chair. Using the corresponding controls to the left, activate the instruments to produce a green wave on the bottom of the screen. Get the wave to match the pattern and you'll win!

Two of the earliest entries into our first Game Design Competition, Puzzle 1 and Puzzle 2 come from the extraordinarily talented designer Tonypa. Each game is a unique take on our competition's theme of simple puzzles that you must figure out how to solve on your own.

Wired is a classic-style puzzle game the author, Vlad Kvitnevski, has taken and molded into something new and entertaining. The concept itself is one that you've probably seen before: Connect wires from one location to the next. It is a casual game perfect for a rainy day, as it's something you can get hooked on and complete without the hairs on your head going gray, or being ripped out.

Houses is a short and simple puzzle game that was an entry in our recent game design competition. In keeping with the competition theme, Sean designed the game to require little in the way of instruction, but there are hints to help you along if needed. The objective is to build 3 houses using all of the pieces given.

Submitted to our game design competition in August, Free the Bird is a simple puzzle game that offers a satisfying reward if you solve it by yourself. The game features the same pleasing minimalism artistic style that is Bart is noted for, and it is of clever design, too. Just enough for a midday break.

Personal Universe is a puzzle game that lets you play with physics. Using sets of colored blocks you must build moving machines that help you complete tasks. Just as the name implies, Personal Universe gives you the materials to let you build a living universe all your own. It's filled with possibilities and offers a surprising amount of freedom to explore and experiment at your leisure.

Created as an entry for our recent game design competition, Quadra Pair 42 is an innocent looking puzzle that will quickly have you in tears. Frustratingly difficult to figure out, the puzzle can be completed in just 21 moves. But the trick is in figuring out the rules first.

Weight is a game of puzzle solving and light mathematics created by Sean for our first Game Design Competition. "Please calibrate scale 2..." is the only instruction you have at first. It might take a little clicking, but soon you'll discover you can add or subtract weights from each scale in order to match pairs of numbers on the left. The first few are easy, but as you get more scales to balance, your life gets complex.

Liquid Colors is a brilliant idea for a puzzle game and one that works exceptionally well in Flash. It is another creative and original puzzle game entry to our recent game design competition. It was created by DDams of France.

In this entertaining puzzle game You are the alchemist's apprentice left in charge of the alchemy shop while the master is away (probably away on business, but we don't really know for sure; details are sketchy, you see, and therefore we shouldn't jump to any conclusions.) In any event, she left some instructions behind: you must conjure three (3) items before the master returns.

Colour Connect has many qualities of a classic casual game: it is easy to understand, simple to pick-up and play, and the randomly generated puzzles present a challenge that is difficult to master. Created by Matthew Dirks of British Columbia, Canada, for our recent game design competition, this puzzle game not only plays great it could also pass as an abstract work of art.

Sigil of Binding is a simple puzzle game submitted to our recent game design competition by John-Paul Walton of Ohio, USA. It is based on the familiar 'flip the squares to turn them all the same' concept of puzzles, and yet John-Paul's impressive audio and visual production skills turn this version into one all his own.

Gear Puzzle is a simple puzzle game featured in our recent game design competition. As the game begins, a small blue character with big puppy-dog eyes catches sight of a pink character locked in a cage. The cage is chained to a gear suspended from the top of the screen. Pegs line the wall and various sized gears are scattered around. Helpless but heroic, the blue guy does the only thing he can to help: jumps on the gear across the room and starts spinning it. Your job is to arrange gears on the pegs to transfer the motion across the room to lower the cage.

Submachine Zero: Ancient Adventure is a spectacularly detailed Flash point-and-click puzzle game from one of the leading designers of the genre, Mateusz Skutnik. This competition entry also placed within a tight group of puzzles that resembled a photo-finish at the horse races. In other words, it was difficult to pass this entry by as a prize winner.

Another competition entry that was only narrowly edged out of an award, Jewel Drop by Nick Redmond consistently received high marks from each of the four reviewers. This ear-training, color-layering game features a clean and appealing interface and a luxuriously rich soundtrack that together create a unique and original game play experience.

Keys very nearly placed among the winners in our game design competition, and if we had but one additional prize, it would have. This mysterious and charming little puzzle game fit the theme perfectly by closely resembling a puzzle you might find in Click Drag Type. In fact, there weren't many other games that came this close to exactly what we were looking for.

Gateway is an impressive and delightful 3D puzzle game from Anders Gustafsson, awarded Honorable Mention and the coveted Audience Award in our first game design competition. The game has a very simple premise: guide a robot through a series of rooms; but you will have to solve a mini-puzzle within each room to advance.

Cyberpunk is a simple Flash puzzle game disguised as an arresting and involving hacking simulation. Armed with four programs and some intuition, you'll have to sneak into a remote computer guarded by obscure (and not-so-obscure) passwords, as well as by some nasty puzzles.

A flash design project by Phillip Reagan of Texas, USA, Thief weaves a cryptic atmosphere with captivating puzzles to pull you into a story you didn't even realize you were participating in. Thief is a well-deserving runner-up in our recent casual gameplay design competition.

At first glance the game appears to be a layout from a schematic diagram, which might easily scare you away if you're a non-technical type. And it will likely have you scratching your head wondering just what to do with it even if you are an electrical engineer. However, those adventurous souls that persevere, by poking around the surface to learn what is hiding underneath, will be nicely rewarded by what they find.

Judging this competition has truly been a bittersweet experience for all of us here at JIG Casual Gameplay. Sweet because we have been graced with so many wonderfully creative and original puzzle games to play. Every last one of them deserves the usual treatment we like to give around here, so look forward to seeing each game highlighted and reviewed in the days and weeks ahead.

Today we are proud to announce the Audience Prize, to be awarded to the game designer of the competition entry that receives the most votes from the JIG community. This award will be a cash prize of at least $100(!)

We hosted our first Flash game design competition, and what an amazing event it was! 21 creative and original puzzle games were submitted from all over the world, and just about any one of them could have walked away with one of the prizes. You simply must play every one of these games and experience the amazing quality present in each of the entries. Cheers to everyone that participated, either by submitting an entry or by playing the games submitted!